Houses
that give back
09. May
The building industry creates more carbon
than any other and with the building volumes going up as the population of the
world increases rapidly, we need innovation for sustainable living. Estonia has
an unexpected solution: wooden houses.
Wooden houses have the potential to reverse
climate change because wood is carbon neutral and with sustainable forestry
management it is possible to increase the net carbon pool of the Earth.
Additionally, wood is lighter and requires a lot less energy to work with, compared
to ordinary brick and mortar houses.
As sustainability has become a hype word in
the last decade, there is a lot of hot air (pun intended) surrounding in. The
Greenline House carbon footprint labelling system developed by the Estonian
company
Kroonpress together with the
Estonian Woodenhouses Cluster aims to
clear matters up. It calculates the cradle-to-gate life cycle greenhouse gas
emissions of procuring, manufacturing and constructing a wooden house, taking
into account both emitted and sequestered carbon. This means we finally have a
reliable and scientifically sound way of assessing the sustainability of wooden
houses. And building houses that do not just use resources but give something
back.
It is no surprise that Estonia is at the
forefront of this innovation. Over half of Estonia is covered with forests. The
manufacturing of wooden houses is one of Estonia’s key industries, with Estonia
being the biggest wooden house exporter in Europe. Main destinations are
Norway, Germany, and the UK, all markets that demand an extremely high quality
product. But this is not just about numbers and economics.
The bestselling book of recent years in
Estonia is a meditation on Estonians’ relationship with forests by Valdur
Mikita. The hotly debated book clearly struck a nerve in the cultural psyche.
Further proof is the fact that the topic of sustainable forest management is a
weekly hot debate topic in the local media.
Chopping down wood is hardly how one would
imagine a environmentalist spending his or her days. But as always, the story
is a bit more complicated. Or much more complicated. Greenline Houses labelling
system strives to make it a bit simpler.
Source:
https://estonia.ee/houses-that-give-back/